We sat facing the glass wall, talking and drinking whisky, while coyotes howled in the distance. Earlier, we’d startled a roadrunner, skittish and quick, near a neighbour’s house. When she was on her deathbed, I asked if I could kiss her forehead and she said yes. A room so small as to disappear. A flutter or flicker, he wrote, could it be that there’s nothing else? He also wrote: I’ve written about art, written about art… and always as more than aesthetics could include. Brocade dress, draped over a chair; white lace curtain at the window. A past lover’s face suddenly seen in a crowded post office, where she wasn’t; a friend’s face glimpsed in the Strand, shortly before his death in another country. We gathered in the garden while the minister pressed five nails into the paschal candle, which she then lit. When he asked me for a text, I began to work old drafts and notes into a new piece of writing. Face in memory or in dream: quiddity, exilic. He took a long walk alone, deep into the night. Dark trees, dark ground.  The  spiral  staircase  in  this  house  just  reminds  me  of  you,  he  wrote  to her. – Lollygagging is out of the question, you said. Hurried evacuations, fearful, desperate… with whatever belongings they could throw onto a wheelbarrow or a child’s cart or else carry. Through a public garden, then down the riverside path – we opened the gate and walked over the ramp to where the houseboat was moored. Derelict boats in the mud; trees and houses on the other side of the river. As he left the carriage, the drunk suddenly spat in the face of a young woman who sat talking with her friend. The trumpet player stared out of a dark balcony in her dream.

a room

                                    stranded

                                    abandoned

She said she wished to brush away the knocking on the door. Visiting a friend once, he looked at a field of grass behind the house and thought: I could spend years drawing this and nothing else…. Of course, it wasn’t true. It was said that their letters had been used to make cardboard boxes in Mexico City. In the opening of the story, a detective arrives in Athens from England, following a lead; he stands in a busy street, listening to a blind accordion player…. I failed to write any more; I tried to find the pages again and failed. The cat had died, he told her, and he’d keep it in the fridge until she returned from her holiday. – Gold is difficult… or doubtful. We’d been instructed to wash our hands before entering the room and after we left. After his wife’s death he went through her diaries, crossing out passage after passage. The only differentiations I could see were between very light and very dark tones, there was no green or blue or what have you. …towards the end I was hallucinating and all sorts of strange things were occurring. – He sang that song about footprints showing the way he’d travelled; don’t you remember?